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Here’s the reality of public relations that no one in our industry is talking about, but we should be. While the media has changed from a print mechanism to a mobile multimedia environment, PR remains stuck in the 20th century. As consumers, we want our news on demand, and in turn demand that credible journalists give it to us immediately. And we don’t just want written stories – we want video, audio, live feeds, in living color. We’d also prefer it digested into cool headlines, in 140 characters, in 6-second vines and matching quizzes. Now, journalists need all these tools of the trade and more. And how do PR pros reach them?

Don Hale, principal of the Don Hale PR consulting firm, is vice president for public relations and marketing communications at Georgia State University where is the chief public relations counselor to President Mark P. Becker.

I have long been troubled by the misuse of the term “marketing” and its seeming predominance over public relations in our industries’ lexicon. Some colleagues have told me repeatedly to shut up and move on. It’s just a problem of semantics, they say.

Let’s start with an admission. I’ve had a love affair with photography for much of my life.

From that summer day spent along the St. Lawrence River, when my mother handed me her palm-sized camera loaded with 110 film, and I stopped time with the press of a button. The afternoon I finally developed my own film, enveloped by the acrid yet welcoming smell of the darkroom. And my days as the director of consumer digital public relations at Kodak, launching a plethora of game-changing products while the world’s first-ever digital camera rested in my office cabinet.

This is a preview of You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet: How Visual Communications Will Transform PR. Read the full post

Once upon a time, before the Internet was a go-to resource, when postal mail and faxes were key ways to disseminate detailed information to media, the press release was pivotal. Those days are long gone because:

Journalists don’t want to write about something that’s already been released. In the past, readers had few media sources for this information. Today, seconds after you post a press release on the Internet, it’s no longer new news. This story is already one click away from any one of billions of people with an Internet connection. Of course, you could send the press release out under embargo beforehand, but even that signals to journalists that you’re giving the story to a ton of competitors.

Stuck with a story that’s not new? You already know that one way to create timeliness is to find a way to tie it in to a holiday.

Valentine’s Day may have come and gone, but St. Patrick’s Day, Earth Day and Mother’s Day will be here sooner than you know it. So, I wanted to share some lessons learned regarding how to approach holiday messaging.

While powerful and timely, holiday messaging can also be challenging. You’re not only competing for the scarce time and attention of journalists, you’re competing with all the other people pitching whatever’s relevant to the calendar item you’re chasing.

So, take a step back and consider ways to come at that holiday like no one else will. Here are two examples: one building on the holiday, the other (a little like this post) developing content after the fact.

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